Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

by Yuval Noah Harari

What then drove forward the evolution of the massive human brain during those 2 million years? Frankly, we don’t know.

One of the most common uses of early stone tools was to crack open bones in order to get to the marrow.

Tolerance is not a Sapiens trademark. In modern times,

This right here can summarize a lot of our present turmoils.

The secret was probably the appearance of fiction. Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths.

Unlike lying, an imagined reality is something that everyone believes in, and as long as this communal belief persists, the imagined reality exerts force in the world.

DNA is not an autocrat.

When two strangers in a tribal society want to trade, they establish trust by appealing to a common god, mythical ancestor or totem animal. In modern society, currency notes usually display religious images, revered ancestors and corporate totems.

The real difference between us and chimpanzees is the mythical glue that binds together large numbers of individuals, families and groups. This glue has made us the masters of creation.

The common impression that pre-agricultural humans lived in an age of stone is a misconception

In other words, the average forager had wider, deeper and more varied knowledge of her immediate surroundings than most of her modern descendants.

The currency of evolution is neither hunger nor pain, but rather copies of DNA helixes.

This is the essence of the Agricultural Revolution: the ability to keep more people alive under worse conditions.

One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations.

Some shepherd tribes used to kill the offspring, eat its flesh, and then stuff the skin. The stuffed offspring was then presented to the mother so that its presence would encourage her milk production.

This discrepancy between evolutionary success and individual suffering is perhaps the most important lesson we can draw from the Agricultural Revolution.

Homo sapiens has no natural rights, just as spiders, hyenas and chimpanzees have no natural rights. But don’t tell that to our servants, lest they murder us at night.

Of all human collective activities, the one most difficult to organise is violence.

People are unequal, not because Hammurabi said so, but because Enlil and Marduk decreed it. People are equal, not because Thomas Jefferson said so, but because God created them that way. Free markets are the best economic system, not because Adam Smith said so, but because these are the immutable laws of nature.

Like the elite of ancient Egypt, most people in most cultures dedicate their lives to building pyramids. Only the names, shapes and sizes of these pyramids change from one culture to the other.

In truth, our concepts ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’ are taken not from biology, but from Christian theology.

Equality can be ensured only by curtailing the freedoms of those who are better off. Guaranteeing that every individual will be free to do as he wishes inevitably short-changes equality.

‘Everyone would work according to their abilities, and receive according to their needs’ turned out in practice into ‘everyone would work as little as they can get away with, and receive as much as they could grab’.

Trust is the raw material from which all types of money are minted.

money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised.

Two thousand years of monotheistic brainwashing have caused most Westerners to see polytheism as ignorant and childish idolatry.

cultures are mental parasites that emerge accidentally, and thereafter take advantage of all people infected by them.

The willingness to admit ignorance has made modern science more dynamic, supple and inquisitive than any previous tradition of knowledge.

Erroneously believing that Amerigo Vespucci had been the person who discovered it, Waldseemüller named the continent in his honour – America.

Racism was replaced by culturism.

We no longer say, ‘It’s in their blood.’ We say, ‘It’s in their culture.’

It was quite thought provoking as we all universally condemn racism while keeping a blind eye on “culturalusm” or maybe “net-worthism”

Some religions, such as Christianity and Nazism, have killed millions out of burning hatred. Capitalism has killed millions out of cold indifference coupled with greed.

The tragedy of industrial agriculture is that it takes great care of the objective needs of animals, while neglecting their subjective needs.

A meaningful life can be extremely satisfying even in the midst of hardship, whereas a meaningless life is a terrible ordeal no matter how comfortable it is.